People are just crazy about this guy

Alton Brown has a special place in my home, well not really my home but more like my DVR. I am a religious fan of the Food Network and when BP II and I started dating I would make him watch it with me. As time went on he became a fan all on his own and found affection for Alton Brown. Now my DVR records and Alton Brown episode everyday and BP II watches it as I cook dinner. It has gotten to the point where he we have seen just about every episode. I even got him an Alton Brown is my hero shirt for Christmas. I don’t want to give the wrong impression; I like the show as well just not as intense of a fan. AB is more about the science behind the food then recipes. How things work and why things go wrong. Actually, when I was at the Food and Wine festival debating whether or not to stand in line for an AB autograph, this crazed AB fan came into the book tent , ran for AB’s new book and ran to the line for a signature. It was like nothing I had ever seen. I thought it was a fluke but then I saw the AB special on TV and he had so many fans fill this convention center in Georgia. But not even the fact that he could fill this convention center but that they knew all the Good Eats jokes was amazing.

Food isn’t the only star of this cookbook


By Andrew Z. Galarneau

NEWS FOOD WRITER

December 30, 2009, 6:48 AM

"Nearly 20 years ago, a director of television commercials named Alton Brown decided he could make a television show about food. His recipe: one part Mr. Wizard, one part Julia Child—and one part Monty Python.

The show, “Good Eats,” would change the landscape of American food television. Viewers gravitated to the defiantly geeky Brown enthusing about the history of ingredients, spoofing classic movies and explaining molecular reactions modeled with Styrofoam balls.

Brown has grown to become the face of the Food Network and pitchman for Welch’s grape juice and other concerns. He’s the host of “Iron Chef America,” and “Good Eats” just celebrated its 10th anniversary with a special televised jubilee.

“Good Eats: The Early Years” provides a fan’s retrospective tour of the show’s first six seasons on the Food Network. Most cookbooks, following restaurant menus, are organized by course—appetizers, salads, soups, entrees and such.

Not “Good Eats”—this volume is arranged by television show and season, signaling that it’s a cookbook where food isn’t the only focus. This book is as much about the show and the behind-the-scenes story of how each episode made it to the screen.

As such, it’s aimed directly at hard-core fans of the show, with 140 recipes salted with Alton-centric tidbits, like the revelation that he was bleeding from a gash to the forehead during an interview used in Episode 13 (“The Art of Darkness I,” about chocolate). He’d bashed his head open but forged on, mindful of the production schedule, the wound mended, badly, with duct tape.

Recipes aren’t the point of this volume. (There will be more; “Good Eats: The Middle Years” is under way.) This is a biography of the show itself, wherein the hero shares the rookie missteps and horrible mistakes that did not, in the end, matter.

The embarrassments just add to the later glories of “Good Eats.” Here we find the opening to “Crust Never Sleeps,” Episode 20, the memory of which ardent fans may have mercifully suppressed.

Brown chose to dramatize the tension between flakiness and tenderness in pie crust recipes by having himself flanked by hand puppets emblazoned with “T” and “F.” They commence pummeling him. “The crew giggles,” Brown relates, “though you can’t hear it on TV.”

Judging from its run up best-seller lists, legions of fans were ready for the chance to relive their love affair with Alton Brown and his works—even if it’s just the early years. "